


Autumn, Away

by tin_girl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Iceland, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-War, very chaotic, what even
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 05:58:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20541245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tin_girl/pseuds/tin_girl
Summary: No doves come from ravens’ eggs, but Harry falls in love all the same.Or, Harry disappears, Draco follows, and they live somewhere beyond the edges of lonely postcards.





	Autumn, Away

**Author's Note:**

> warning: overuse of the word 'fuck' in all its forms because apparently that's how i write Draco Malfoy, sorry not sorry. 
> 
> Anyway, this is a mess that I spontaneously decided to write and just finished. All I can say is that.... uh... I love Iceland? and Drarry? So I randomly wrote this mess of a fanfic about Drarry in Iceland, you're welcome? 
> 
> Also, this features the Reynisfjara beach, where the tides are so strong that going in ankle-deep is not recommended 
> 
> (so, basically, my love letter to Iceland)

"No doves come from ravens’ eggs"  
~~Hannah Kent, Burial Rites

They meet in Iceland because Draco follows Harry there. Harry knows this without asking, and he wouldn’t ask, anyway, because he knows better than to expect answers from a Malfoy.

“Why here, of all fucking places?” Draco asks – growls, almost – shoulders hunched, coat good enough for English spring but unsuited for Iceland bleeding autumn all over the hills. “Fucking Vik, Potter, I swear—”

“Nobody forced you to come here,” Harry says, because it’s less harsh than, nobody asked you to come here, or, what the fuck are you doing here, or, get lost.

It’s not that Draco doesn’t deserve harshness, only where before Harry used to remember eleven years old Draco as the boy who snarled at Ron and held his hand out to Harry, now he tends to remember him as this spoiled, excited thing in Madam Malkin’s and imagines him like a puppy, running to the front door right before Lucius comes in, tongue hanging out, only to be kicked aside.

“Well, nobody forced you to come here, either,” Draco mumbles, all wronged, looking away, pout dragging his mouth into childish plumpness.

“Hell, Malfoy, I don’t only go where I’m forced to go. I’m – how do you say that? – _finding_ myself.”

He says it dripping with sarcasm, so that Draco doesn’t guess it for the truth that it is.

Draco looks around, helpless, as if searching for something, a glint of a lost bracelet, a shoe, a horcrux. It’s the kind of beach where you’d expect the ocean to spit one out, everything around dead not because it died but because it’s never been alive in the first place.

“There’s nothing to find here,” Draco says, and Harry laughs quietly, the sound as hollow as the sky above, grey, scooped out, like something was there once. Reynisfjara is as barren as it goes, God’s forgotten ashtray, ocean screaming at no one, sand black and rubbing skin red. Harry stands between the worlds, right where the waves dare to lick, the tips of his ratty sneakers wet.

“Who says I’m looking?” he whispers, and knows that, through the noise, Draco won’t hear.

*

Draco goes away, impatient, huffing, sighing, throwing his hands up, and Harry thinks that maybe he won’t see him anymore, but half an hour later, when he’s still toeing death, Draco comes back, yelling something.

He tumbles into Harry two feet away from where he apparated, momentum shoving him into Harry’s side like a domino piece flicked with a fingernail. They almost fall to the wet-dry frontier of sand but Draco catches them into a parody of balance, somehow, and hauls Harry backwards. Three steps away from the waves, and they crash to the ground, after all. The ocean howls, hungry, disappointed, furious, and it’s so loud that there should be no other sounds, but Draco’s breath on Harry’s neck is louder, and his heartbeat knocking into the soft between Harry’s ribs is stronger.

“What the fuck are you doing, you fucking idiot!”

Harry thinks that Draco didn’t use to swear this much in school, and laughs.

“Why the fuck would you stand so close to the waves? Merlin, did they _crucio_ the brain out of you, what the fuck—”

“You didn’t worry, before,” Harry reminds him, calmly. Splayed on his back, he feels like something dead, a seagull maybe, and where Draco is sprawled on top of him, there are his guts, spilled out and warm, finally warm.

“Yes, well, before I didn’t know this was some fucking death beach where you can fucking die!”

Harry is so warm that he doesn’t reply for a moment, fighting sleep.

“Malfoy,” he says, after Draco’s yelled himself into silence, their knees knocking together and Draco’s breath on Harry’s skin like something Harry’s forgotten, even though he couldn’t have remembered it in the first place. “Take me to dinner.”

*

At a small table in a restaurant in Vik, the lighting mellow enough that Draco doesn’t look as half-dead as he seemed outside, they talk over lamb soup.

“Why here?” Draco asks again, poking the bread laid out in front of him with distrust. He has black sand everywhere – in his hair, in his eyelashes, in the crook of his neck.

“Of all fucking places,” Harry adds, pitching his voice mock-high, and Draco kicks him under the table, so hard that his soup sloshes over the rim of the plate. Harry’s own is safe, since he’s already eaten half of it.

He didn’t use to eat much, in the months after Voldemort, but it’s been a little over a year, and life goes on.

“Iceland, the land of trolls,” he says, and proceeds to tell Draco about the Sagas, and the waterfalls, and the glaciers. When he first came here, on a whim, three days ago, he decided to be interested and alive, reaching for leaflets, buying cheap, second-hand guidebooks, unfolding maps. He’s read most already, twice, and ended up flirting with Reynisfjara before seeing anything else, anyway, the death calling him like someone beautiful, crooking a finger.

“What are you now, a tour guide?” Draco says, sceptic, and there’s soup residue on his mouth, like a smudge of lip gloss after a kiss. Ginny used to wear lip gloss, before it all went to hell.

“If you want, I can show you Iceland,” Harry offers, easy, pretending he’s not just a cavity left over after something ate into the war’s teeth.

“You haven’t seen it yourself,” Draco grumbles, irritated, as if he’s offended, on the verge of not talking to Harry. Harry remembers the quiet, and hates how his stomach knots, just like when you miss a step.

“We can see it together.”

“I hate you,” Draco reminds him, but it sounds lazy, like a prayer Draco’s learned by heart but doesn’t feel passionate about anymore, mere habit.

“We might as well,” Harry insists. “Since we’re both here.”

“Somehow,” Draco sighs, and Harry chokes on his soup, that’s how hard he starts laughing, because of course Draco is going to pretend that this is all a coincidence now, _of fucking course_. He scoops some of the black-salt butter with the crust of his bread and smiles at how Draco scowls in disgust. Wait till you taste shark, he thinks. Wait till we both do.

In the end, Draco forgets to ask why here of all fucking places again.

*

Over the next few days, Harry learns that Draco has too many cashmere jumpers, and that Iceland in autumn is the colour of dried blood, like a messy crime scene.

“At least in Europe, they have gold and ornaments in churches,” Draco grumbles, pulling his sleeves over his knuckles for warmth, mouth covered with Harry’s Gryffindor scarf and voice still too loud between the wooden pews.

“Draco,” Harry says, patient. “We _are_ in Europe.”

“Well, of course we are, but I meant the part of Europe where they collect money for church renovations even though they have five Marys made of gold around the altar.”

“Usually, they’re just painted gold,” Harry says, and remembers how he wanted to be alone and only took a few things with him across the ocean – a handful of notes, a yoyo, his wand. He snuck out in the middle of the night, wary of creaking floorboards like a skilled thief, even though there was no one else at Grimmauld Place, and promised himself that after a day or two, he’d send Ron and Hermione a postcard.

It’s already been a week.

“Oh, because that makes so much difference!” Draco goes off, and proceeds to complain about everything from baroque abundance through Martin Luther to the ridiculousness of confession. There’s something almost endearing about his knowledge of muggle religion, full of holes but held together somehow, like an old coat, and Harry shudders at the thought, forcing himself to remember sixth year, and all that Draco ruined, all that he’s never fixed.

Draco is in the middle of complaining about the pope, all while standing in a protestant church, and Harry forces himself to pretend that he minds.

“Because you’re such a saint,” he says, dry but nowhere near as harsh as he intended, and thinks that the joke’s on him, because in the dim light and against the white walls, Draco looks like he could easily be one.

Draco stops talking, hands caught mid-movement like birds frozen alert, but he never closes his mouth all the way, and Harry knows there are words there, pressed under Draco’s tongue, that will make it all better, somehow.

“Well, of course I’m not a saint,” Draco says. “Don’t be stupid. Really, it’s a wonder I haven’t burned to ash when I crossed the doorstep.”

Suddenly, Harry remembers the Dark Mark that he can’t ever see with Draco’s sleeves brushing his knuckles. Draco’s knuckles, chapped, even though every morning Draco rubs a criminal amount of cream into the skin. Harry smiles, wry, at how he’s been paying more attention to that than to all that Draco’s done, all that he is.

“I’m a Death Eater, Harry, or have you forgotten?” Draco laughs, and who needs church bells? “Maybe you think I regret it all, but when I hear ‘regrets’, I can’t bring myself to think of anything besides all the times I’ve snapped at my mother.”

Harry tilts his head, and imagines having a Time-Turner and throwing it to Draco – how it would catch light in its arc through air, and how Draco would use it and come back, Dark Mark still licked into his skin, but, somewhere in the past, some younger Draco never yelling at Narcissa to shut up, to leave him alone, to fuck off.

Harry remembers that the war was not about good and bad. No wars are. Six feet away, Draco pulls Harry’s scarf up and to hell with everyone, because when Harry offered it to him, Draco whined and complained for a quarter of an hour, but not because of Gryffindor, only because the colours were _ugly_, and he would look like a _homeless person_ who steals clothes from those lost & found boxes, and did Harry think it was _funny_.

Then, in the end, he wore it, and smiled on top of cliffs.

*

“Everything here is so fucking expensive,” Draco says in a restaurant, the hills outside as if eaten-through by rust. There’s an out-of-place strand of hair above Draco’s forehead, and Harry’s fingers itch.

“Can you even afford all those hotels?” Harry says, leaning back in his chair, the legs of it screeching, just to escape stupid temptations.

Draco frowns, scratches his wrist, seems embarrassed.

“We can’t afford much of anything, these days. I have some savings, but not much.”

It’s a more honest reply than Harry expected, and he wonders if it’d be okay, after all, if he brushed that strand of hair aside for Draco.

“Let’s just get a double next time, then. No use getting separate rooms if you’re complaining about soup prices.”

“They’re _criminal_,” Draco insists, and chews on bread. He has a funny way of eating it – tears the slices to bits first and then pops them into his mouth like crisps. Harry expected him to be more aristocratic, but it’s not like he lacks elegance, his fingers long and lazy, wrists like something that’d crack if you squeezed too hard. It’s infuriating, Draco elegant in everything, Harry’s scarf like something weaved from the season around his neck, and not an old, frayed thing, swear words falling out of his mouth like lines of sonnets. Iceland around him like it’s just a background that Draco has been glued to, there only to make him look all the more beautiful, and Harry almost regrets not choosing someplace Mediterranean, Spain or Greece, maybe Croatia. Cold landscapes suits Draco too much, as if the country’s recognized his bones and melts around him into adoration wherever Draco goes.

“You have grease on your nose,” Harry says, knowing Draco will tell him to go to hell, looking forward to it.

*

They slip on rocks under Seljalandsfoss, Draco trips on the Fimmvörðuháls trail and lets Harry catch him, and they walk the road’s shoulder along Eldhraun, which looks like some moss-grown ancient creature boiled to death.

The water in Iceland is the cold grey of reptile skin, and Draco smiles at it like it doesn’t scare him, like he doesn’t think that things die here. Harry smiles, too, but never at the right things, and adjusts the Gryffindor scarf for Draco where it’s slipped, revealing collarbones. Harry remembers being hungry, and eating, licking bones clean.

I won’t hate myself, he whispers to himself at night. I won’t.

*

“Why here, of all fucking places?” Draco finally asks again some days later, drinking hot chocolate with rum from a plastic cup.

Harry remembers trying to think of a place and settling for this chunk of land where trolls live and wars don’t reach.

“Because I don’t think Voldemort’s ever been here,” he admits, and Draco looks at him, frowning like he’s worried, like Harry matters, like if the ocean licked him off Reynisfjara, someone would howl back at it.

*

When Harry kisses Draco, it’s on the neck, because the skin stretched over Draco’s collarbone where the scarf always blinks open like an eye looks red, tip-of-a-match red, and there’s something that irritates Harry about Draco being cold and not realizing. Not a week ago, he would complain and complain and complain—

Draco whines, and Harry doesn’t know what to do, after, so he just keeps his mouth there, caught on the bone, until the skin doesn’t seem cold, until it yields, until Draco tangles his fingers in Harry’s hair and tugs, until Harry remembers how Draco licked sauce off them after dinner.

*

After, everything is the same. Draco keeps complaining about everything, throwing Harry’s socks every which way, looking for a pen, a map, his own socks. It’s been three days, and everything is the same, and Draco’s collarbones are back to being cold, Harry’s sure, and he can hear Reynisfjara calling to him at night like a siren, like the kind of lullaby that will only lull you to sleep if you crawl to it, if it’s whispered in your ear, if it’s forever.

“Would it kill you to clean every once in a while? We’re only here for two nights, you only have a bag’s worth of things, and—”

“If I’m so awful to live with, why did you follow me all the way here in the first place?”

Draco stops rumpling the covers in search of whatever it is he’s looking for this time, and gapes at him.

“What a stupid question,” he huffs, like Harry’s a child he doesn’t have the patience for. “And why did you follow me around all of sixth year, hmm?”

Harry looks at him, really looks at him, this collection of too-sharp bones and goose-bumped skin, this graceless, graceful thing that tumbled into his life like it was always meant to, this mess of a boy, war-chewed and cruelty-spit.

“I followed you around because there was a war coming, Malfoy!” he yells, tired of it all, tired of the exhaustion in his bones that allowed him to settle here, one backpack, different hotels, Draco talking about colonialism like his parents aren’t partially responsible for the wizarding-world equivalent of it. How Harry falls asleep to it, even though nothing else quite does the trick. “I followed you around, because I knew that you were doing something you shouldn’t be doing, and would you look at that, I was fucking right!”

Draco stares at him in some young naivety, like he still believes that things like that can always be taken back, like the words are something physical, awkwardly spit out between them, a bird’s pellet that Harry can gather in his hand and hide from sight.

“I followed you, but it had nothing to do with you!” Harry yells, nail to the coffin, and Draco looks _sad_ of all things, miserably sad, like Harry just broke his heart or something, and Harry nearly laughs at the irony of it all.

When Draco leaves, Harry almost finds the strength to tell him, don’t bother, I’m leaving, too.

*

It was a lie, of course. Back in sixth year, it wasn’t about the war, or Voldemort, or Death Eaters. It was just about Draco, sneaking off, disappearing, where are you going, where are you hiding, what are you doing, I always knew where you were before, I always _knew_—

Harry sways where the waves munch on the shore, half-drunk, on alcohol, on tears, on the salt in the air. He thinks that if he split his soul into seven horcruxes, Draco would be one, and almost throws up. He thinks that before it’s all over, he wants to see the scars he charmed into Draco’s skin, and apologize for them with his fingers, even though Draco’s never apologized for anything and never will.

*

“What the fuck are you doing, you fucking idiot!” Draco yells, hauling Harry out of the freezing water. He’s been sitting on the sand, and then the water licked his ankles, licked his calves, licked his knees, snagged him and swallowed him whole—

“What the fuck, it was going to take you, it almost took you, it almost took you, it almost took – it almost _took_ you,” Draco keeps yelling, his voice breaking, his body sharp-edged and warm under Harry, like hardening, cooling lava, his fingers clinging to Harry as if he’s trying to climb him, his breath like something Harry’s forgotten, only he hasn’t, how could he ever forget?

“I kissed you, and then you didn’t do anything,” Harry says, melting into Draco, filling his dips like dough.

“What the fuck, Harry, are you fucking five years old? Sweet Salazar! I didn’t, what, kiss you back? Well, for Merlin’s sake, I’ll kiss you to death, just don’t go die on your own, you fucking idiot!”

Then, Draco apparates them and kicks Harry’s shoes off for him. His eyes are red, and when Harry points it out, he says it’s because sand got into them and to stop fucking smiling, that it’s all Harry’s fucking fault, anyway. Later, when they’re both clean and warm and dressed in layers, Harry pushes Draco’s stupid cashmere jumper up and tries and tries and tries to touch the scars away.

“I don’t mind them,” Draco says, and smiles perversely. “In a way, I like them.”  
Harry’s too worn out to cry, so he just smiles.

*

“It’s been three weeks, and you haven’t written them yet?” Draco repeats, drinking his coffee in gulps, even though it’s still steaming.

“Two and a half,” Harry corrects.

“Two and six days,” Draco says, and rolls his eyes.

“I sent them a note before I left—”

“Merlin, Harry, are you even serious—”

“Okay, okay, fine! I’ll, write, a, a postcard!”

Draco stares at him over the rim of his cup, a mix of fondness and pity that, Harry’s learned, always makes him want to break a plate.

“It’s not that urgent. If they wanted to find me, they would, like you did.”

Draco sighs, finishes the coffee. Outside, they spin the rack with postcards swaying on the doorstep of some crumped souvenirs shops. Harry chooses a plain, black-and-white one, a photo of a mountainside, something quiet about it that he likes, and asks the woman inside the shop if she has stamps. Later, in their hotel room – only one bed, this time – he writes something enthusiastic at the back of the postcard, Draco’s chin digging into his shoulder.

Before they post it the next day, Harry squints at it and thinks that it could well enough be a magical photograph of the two of them, smiling, only after they got tired of everyone watching them and snuck off somewhere beyond the frame. In the end, he doesn’t want good. He only wants away.

He thinks that the only way he can find himself is by forgetting himself, anyway, and, as Draco spits out shark meat into Harry’s sleeve, he wonders if the same is true for Draco. Draco, who is probably better than he thinks he is, and possibly worse than Harry thinks – or is it the other way around? – Draco, who Harry’s happy to learn somewhere in that middle. Draco, who finally agrees to buy a decent jacket and who walks the chewed-on fingernail of South Iceland coast with Harry, one mile at a time. These days, Draco’s collarbones are never cold and at night, Harry’s too busy falling asleep while listening to Draco discuss everything from thermal underwear to Swiss cheese to pay attention to Reynisfjera’s whispers. For all he knows, the ocean might have given up on him already, defeated into a sweet quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> That quote I put at the beginning probably doesn't make that much sense in context, or rather, the story is not consistent enough for it to work, but whatever. Anyway, I didn't mean that Draco can't be good because of his parents and upbringing, I just meant that he can't ever be completely seperate from it and that maybe it's not the end of the world. Also, I meant that Harry doesn't need a good, redeemed Draco, only escape so yep, they will travel Iceland for a couple of months and then live happily ever after or something. And I feel like Harry is not a person sometimes, since all his life was about Voldemort, so I always imagine him 'finding' himself somewhere. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading if anyone has! <3


End file.
